Medical English – how to study effectively?
How to read specialized documents in English?
How to communicate with foreign colleagues when going to seminars or seminars?
Which document should I choose to start with, and once I have chosen it, what is the best way to read and use that document? most?
Understanding the concerns of many colleagues and students, today I will share 3 tips to learn Medical English well for beginners.
1. Take time to LEARN THROUGH word roots, prefixes, and suffixes
1.1 What are the advantages of this way of learning?
Learning these groups of words gives you 3 benefits compared to the traditional way of learning:
- Helps you have a basic concept of terminology.
- Can guess the meaning of a new word based on its components.
- Remember the meaning of the term longer.
For example, if you If you know that “Hyper” is higher than normal, then you can guess that the term “Hypertension” means “Higher than normal blood pressure.”
However, you should not just memorize them dryly.
Don’t sit around muttering that “Hyper” is higher than normal. Instead, learn with specific and interesting examples, like Hypertension, Hyper is higher than normal, hypertension is blood pressure is higher than normal.
1.2 How much time should be spent on this task?
The answer is DON’T spend too much time on this!
The reason is that word roots, prefixes, and suffixes cannot help you deeply understand a Medical term.
The basics of learning Medical English is not the same as learning General English vocabulary. usually.
The purpose of learning Medical English is to know Medical knowledge, instead of knowing the definition of terms.
For example, when learning “Hypertension”, you can guess that blood pressure is higher than normal. But if you just stop there, you won’t know what the measurement index is for high blood pressure level 1, level 2, level 3. Then what is the difference between Hypertensive Urgency, Hypertensive Emergency?
And of course, if asked further, you will be even more confused.
That’s why, I will spend most of my time on number 2. below.
2. Regularly learn about Medical topics in English
I will consider Medical English as a tool to improve my medical professional knowledge, and focus on learning knowledge instead of learning terminology.
When you learn this way, you will have a deep understanding, long-term memory, and durable memory.
For example, when you learn thoroughly about the disease hypertension – from symptoms, complications, treatment, etc. then you will remember what hypertension is.
Not only will you remember the definition, but you will also be knowledgeable and up to date on the latest diagnosis and treatment recommendations of this disease, to become a better doctor.
So what sources should I learn specialized English from?
To start, I will get information from the sources that are easiest to understand and interesting to me.
For example, I am someone who likes to watch videos and illustrations, so I will start learning from the videos with illustrations on Youtube, and watch the video with subtitles for easier understanding.
When reading, I will read from books or websites written concisely, easily understood, and in common language.
After I get used to it, I will increase the difficulty, reading from specialized textbooks with few pictures and lots of text, or scientific magazines.
Because if you start learning right away from these sources, it will lead to boredom and giving up. Reading a sentence and looking up all 5-6 words in the dictionary is really difficult for beginners.
3. Use learned knowledge to serve the job
For example, for doctors who want to practice and work abroad, or in an environment where communicating in English with patients, practice explaining terms in the simplest way for the patient to understand.
Simply, when working as a clinician, the patient’s most important concern is not how much the doctor understands, but how much the patient understands. much.
In short, the 3 things I will do are:
(1) Learn through word roots, prefixes, and suffixes as a basis.
(2) Find information in English about topics you are interested in.
(3) Find ways to practice immediately.
I will do these three things in parallel so that they support each other.
Wish you success in the process of learning English for the medical field.
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